Wireless computing technologies provide untethered access to the Internet and other networks. One of the most critical technologies for wireless networking (or Wi-Fi) is the IEEE 802.11 family of protocols promulgated by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. Currently, the protocols are widely adopted in stations such as laptop computers, tablet computers, smart phones, and network appliances.
Stations complying with standards such as IEEE 802.11 have control over how a connection to wireless network is made. Namely, a station selects an access point among a number of access points that have sent out beacons advertising a presence. The beacon includes a BSSID (Basic Service Set Identifier) as an identifier of the access point. In turn, the station sends data packets which include the BSSID of the intended access point. Unintended access points receiving a transmission merely ignore the data packets.
One technique to address this issue is to download customized software to a station. But reconfiguration of stations running on a station is not always desirable. For instance, guests connecting to a public hot spot for only one time would be burdened with the process of downloading and installing a client during a short connection. Furthermore, many computer users are weary about malicious applications downloaded from the Internet.
Another technique to address this issue, known as virtual port, assigns a BSSID to each station in order to set uplink parameters. Unfortunately, the overhead of virtual port is prohibitive for scaling because regular beacons are sent out for each BSSID to maintain synchronization with an access point. In larger deployments, the occurrence of still beacons increase as the requirement for individual beacons required over each period cannot be met. Consequentially, degradation of station connectivity can occur, for instance, when 20 or more wireless stations are connected to the access point.
What is needed is a robust technique to provide a more scalable solution for per station control of multiple stations across multiple access points in a wireless communication network.